Upper School Curriculum

Suggested Reflection Questions

1. Your role at Burke's

2. When did this opportunity take place?

3. Summary of workshop/ opportunity

4. Goals & Collaborations:

   - What were your big takeaways from your workshop or project?

As a relatively new US math specialist, I wanted to learn more about math specialist responsibilities. I found UW Stout’s “Leadership for Math Specialists” 8-week online course and thought it would be a good fit. I was particularly interested in learning more about how to best leverage my role to improve our students’ understanding of math. When I first began the course, I wondered what math specialists at other schools did and what roles they played in supporting math education. I quickly learned that this position is unique at each school based on the needs of their community.

Each week, we focused on a different topic. Here are a few takeaways. 

• Transformative shifts in classroom practice and how they connect to the Mathematical Practices: Small changes allow us to move towards a classroom environment where students reason, share their thinking, compare strategies, select efficient strategies, use multiple representations and are…

This Spring, Mary Carbonara, a known Bay Area Dance Educator and Choreographer, and former head of Education at Lines Ballet, visited 7th Grade Drama classes to teach students and myself, the building blocks of choreography so we could explore creating a movement sequence for the Ghost scene, Act 1, Scene 4, in William Shakespeare's, Hamlet. Students were lead in a dynamic dance warm up by Carbonara and then, rather than being taught a dance, were asked to think about and analyze the role movement plays on stage and in performance. Carbonara posed a series of critical questions and lead us in discussion on dance in performance: What is the difference between one person standing on a stage, and a group of people? How does that make you feel? What is uniformity? When do we see uniformity in daily life? Why and when would a group of humans do the sa…

As usual, this last BAISL meeting was informative and inspiring. 

Something to look into for next year: UC Berkeley Summer Institute for teachers/librarians; one BAISL member received a grant from the UC Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies to explore Mongolian history through the British Library, which he uses to inform his high school curriculum

Fun idea: use Library monitor for student book reviews as rotating screensaver; book reviews can be written casually at recess or formally in-class, artwork is a plus

Session on Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPG): 

This may be especially timely given the introduction of next year’s schedule with built-in time for clubs

• Excellent vehicle for SEL-conflict resolution, problem solving, learning about history, etc.